Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

missing my wife’s doctor’s appointment, for Christ’s sake.”

“Nuance, Shawn, all these little details are crucial,” Josh says. He hears Jenna spout a judgmental cough. “Well, most of them.”

Shawn shifts his attention. “Jenna, would you pick up from there, or start over completely, with about a tenth of the words?”

“I’m just getting to the important part,” Josh says. “Now, bear with me. This next little sequence is how I imagined it in my head. We’ve pieced the Billy Donovan part together from news stories and eyewitnesses, including Tracy’s knowledge of the guy’s name.”

“Tracy Heissman?” Shawn asks. “And who the hell is Billy Donovan?”

“Hold your horses. I’m about to tell you.”

Josh begins again …

C h a p t e r   1 1

ACROSS TOWN, BILLY Donovan’s heart was racing out of control as he bolted through the crowd in Union Square. Billy was young, maybe twenty-seven, tall, very attractive, light-brown hair in a crew cut, ice-blue eyes. He was frantic. Confused. Out of breath. Afraid for his life. Was he being chased? He didn’t understand what could’ve happened. And not by just one man, but two?

Finally having outrun the two men, Billy looked behind him to make sure they weren’t there, then spotted an open door to an apartment building foyer right off the square. He ran inside the first set of double doors and ducked out of sight.

The two men who were chasing Billy looked around. The older of the two, a distinguished-looking gray-haired gentleman, brushed his tux with the back of his fingers as he caught his breath. He took out his phone and dialed, while his bodyguard continued to search.

“I think we lost him.” The bodyguard walked ahead.

The older man looked around to see if he could find the man they were chasing, then spoke into his phone. “Hillary, honey, there’s, uh, been a holdup at work, I’m running a little late and I …”

He stopped speaking. He began gasping for words, choking on the blood coming up through his throat, waving his other arm to get his bodyguard’s attention. He dropped his cellphone and fell sideways to the ground. A small crowd gathered. Suddenly a few began to scream, noticing the blood collecting in a pool on the sidewalk underneath the man. The bodyguard rushed to his boss’s side.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT the party, I heard someone behind me mocking a southern accent.

“Why, Josh Harrison, you son of a gun.”

I turned around. “Why, Miss Hillary Gordon, as I live and breathe,” I overly mocked her mocking me.

We hugged.

“This is all your doing, right? You handsome southern devil? 1 knew tonight was going to be amazing when I got this lovely invitation in the mail.”

She reached into her purse to find it.

“You should see the gift bag,” I replied, anticipating Hillary’s ooh, aah moment over the invitation.

Hillary was the fifty-seven-year-old wife of Walter Gordon, one of the pioneers of the interactive Internet commerce revolution. Time had recently awarded him “Man of the Future.” In most business circles, he was considered one of the smartest men in the world, a former think tank member under Obama … respected, rich, and indispensable to many Fortune 500 clients who grew to benefit from his revolutionary tactics that consistently stayed ahead of consumer trends. Whenever Gordon announced a new idea or product, it made headlines. People flocked to it, and his clients made money. And Hillary was his perfect wife—the constant, loyal, and proud companion. Poised, graceful, and personable, she was also one of Josh’s biggest fans. And vice versa.

“Oh, lookie here,” Hillary said, pulling out her phone instead of the invitation. “You know, Walter is running late, and I think I just missed his call. Will you excuse me, please?”

I nodded, turned around, and began walking through the enormous crowd at the event. So many celebrities, so much media, I thought. Damn, this is good.

Not paying attention to where I was walking, I bumped into Jenna. She was standing perfectly still. She looked pale, withdrawn, disengaged.

“Jenna, what’s wrong? Is Tracy okay? What?” I’d never seen her like this. “Talk to me, please.”

She slowly scrunched her brow, trying to make sense of what she was about to say. She took a deep breath. “She was at Union Square waiting for a cab outside her apartment, just … talking to me.”

Jenna’s face lost all expression.

“What happened?” I moved closer to her, rested my hand on her shoulder. “Jenna, you’re scaring me.”

“Then Tracy started screaming. She told me a man in a tux just fell down … dead … practically in front of her. He’d been shot in his back.” She began to speak in a whisper. “Tracy said there was blood on her shoes.”

“What? Oh, Jesus.” I took Jenna’s hand. “Is she okay?”

“Josh … Tracy said she recognized him, the man in the tux.” Jenna finally looked at me right in the eyes. “It was Walter Gordon. Walter’s dead.”

I paused, looked down, then with widening eyes turned around to Hillary. At the same moment, Hillary dropped her cellphone and collapsed.

We rushed to her side and held her. Barely coherent, Hillary began to mutter “my husband, my husband” over and over.

I took her hand.

Hillary looked at me and said, “I think I just heard him die.”

C h a p t e r   1 2

“WAIT, HOW DO you know Billy Donovan?” Again, Shawn interrupts Josh’s recall of the night. “I’ve never heard that name from anywhere, not even from the Times.”

“We’ll get to that,” Josh says. “We are far from done.”

“But you just said this Billy guy is the one who killed Walter, right?” Shawn asks. “If you have proof, we gotta find this guy.”

Shawn now wishes the detectives were hearing the conversation. He knows Detective Penance has been closely coordinating with the other precinct investigating the second of what the press had deemed the Pub Murders, two killings that involved two different associates of the same publishing house on the same night: the first being Lennox on the Lower East Side, the second being